From age 11 through 22 I worked at York Golf Club in Oak Brook, Ill. York is no more, built over by the Butler National Golf Club in the early 1960s. The hours were long, the pay low by present standards, but sufficient enough so when I entered the University of Michigan as an out-of-state student I already had enough in-the-bank savings to pay my entire way through that institution and, later, the University of Illinois.
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When I was 15 the course offered me my first self-employment, in addition to working at the first tee and in maintenance. I became the official ball hawk for the course, having exclusive rights to find and sell all my "catch" back to the course for either 9 cents or 8 cents per ball, depending upon quality. The course had five water holes; two were monsters in terms of balls ending up in the drink. I remember making the astronomical amount of $45 in a half-hour’s time when I hit the "mother load" of balls in one pocket along Salt Creek.
No. 15 was a short par 4, with the main branch of Salt Creek running just in front of the long tee, and from there a spur ran to the side and in front of the shorter tee, then along the right side of the fairway, back around to the front of the elevated green, and then a final loop to pass behind the green on its way back to the main part of Salt Creek. To work the Salt Creek spur properly, you needed wadders, which allowed you to kneel in 18 inches of muck while working your hands back and forth in about a foot of water. If you wanted to "feel" those submerged balls, wearing gloves was not an option. The occasional snapping turtle, broken glass bottle and numerous leeches aside, the golf ball pickings were fantastic.
I was working the spur immediately in front of the green in the early evening hours when a foursome hit off from the long tee. One of the golfers’ balls struck the green side of the spur bank, hitting a stone wall and bouncing back nearly hitting me. I reached down, grabbed the ball, and was about to toss it up on the fairway, when I thought "Why not?" So I wiped off the muddy ball on my shirt, and with an underhand lob, tossed it up onto the green toward the hole. My heart began to race when I heard the ball hit the pin, although I was not in a position to see where the ball finally ended up.
When the golfers finally assembled on the fairway in back of me to hit their approach shots, the one who had obviously hit the stone wall asked if I had seen where his ball went. I responded "I heard it hit the bank on the other side, that's all I know." When the foursome crossed the bridge and approached the green, I expected to hear the guy who had asked me the question to say "Hey, its eagle time, my ball is on the green!" But no such words were uttered. He and his partner began looking for the ball. "Where could it be?" And then the whooping began: "By God, I made a hole-in-one on a par 4!" At that very moment I could have confessed what really happened, but the time to speak came and went in a heartbeat. And so some golfer has most likely gone to his grave believing that he had a hole in one on a par 4 hole at York Golf Club. So lesson 1 learned, and two more experiences to go – same hole, same job.
Michael J. Healy, Ph.D., is a turfgrass pathologist in private practice operating out of southern Alabama. He can be reached at: 251-986-6240, mjhealy@gulftel.com, or through his Web site: www.sportsturfdiagnostics.com
Read more of Healy’s "lessons learned" in the coming weeks in GCI’s weekly e-newsletter. Do you have nostalgic experiences of your own from your early days working in golf course maintenance? If so, we’d like to hear them. E-mail Senior Editor Marisa Palmieri at mpalmieri@gie.net, and we'll run our favorites on golfcourseindustry.com.